I may regret starting this discussion, but let’s talk a bit about the changing nature of print journalism.

It’s no secret that newspapers across the country are in survival mode, cutting staff and shrinking the amount of space for local and international coverage in attempts to reduce costs.

So when I received a press release this morning about the St. Charles Police Department joining Nixle.com, an online information service designed to alert residents to timely, targeted “community-level” public safety information online, I couldn’t help but raise this question:

Isn’t that pretty much what local news media already do, despite the industry’s ongoing financial challenges?

St. Charles police Detective Derek Piasecki says users who register with Nixle can receive and share information over the online network and through cell phone communication. It’s modeled after social networking websites and is free to the police department and users, although standard text messaging rates do apply for those without cell phone texting plans.

Piasecki said in a news release that the network is “built exclusively to provide secure and reliable communications,” by connecting “municipal agencies and community organizations to residents in real time.”

Nixle provides a practical example: A man with Alzheimer’s disease wanders from home. His worried relatives call police, and the police instantly send alerts by e-mail or to subscribers’ cell phones with a description of the lost individual.

The real-time network will be linked to the St. Charles’ police dispatch operations. So emergency alerts and advisories can be dispatched as they happen.

These days, police departments typically distribute timely information to the public by sending out a press release to local media, but Nixle makes it possible for police to communicate directly and quickly with the public. In that sense, perhaps this is more a public safety tool than news.

According to the company’s website, “Until now, municipalities and communities have relied upon signs in neighborhoods and local buildings, fragmented email lists, and even door hangers to communicate important geographically-targeted neighborhood to community-level information.”

Will websites like Nixle become increasingly common as news organizations cut back? Of course, journalists will argue they provide a valuable public service: balanced and accurate information free of the spin that organizations so often include to promote themselves in a positive light.

Do you think you could rely on such websites for reliable information? Would you use Nixle to keep up with what’s going on locally and satisfy your local news appetite?